Okay, so the weekend is here and instead of playing around with my new AMD Athlon 64 LE-1620 and XFCE, I am just screwing around with my laptop. I sent NewEgg an email yesterday, but they didn't respond. I wanted to ask them about getting a shipping discount for a new motherboard, and also ask them about the restocking fee.
I decided to call NewEgg up and ask them about it because I really wanted to order another motherboard (specifically, the ASRock ALIVENF6G-VSTA AM2 because of its Micro-ATX form factor, four memory slots, and the fact that it doesn't require a 24-pin power supply [I have a very small micro-atx case with a 20-pin power supply I wanted to use]). Newegg responded by telling me that I would have to wait until they received the old motherboard back before and could test the board before they would consider giving me a shipping discount. I told him I kind of did not want to wait a week before getting a shipping discount, and then wait another couple of days for the board to arrive, but he didn't seem to care. I told him that he could look at my order history and see I spend a lot of money there, but again he didn't seem to care.
I was kinda pissed off.
I got off the phone, went to Newegg and ordered the above board (It's crazy; a week ago this board was $49.99, then it went up to $52.99, and now its $59.99 with free three day shipping). I ordered the board, and NewEgg shipped it today; the only problem was instead of shipping it UPS Three Day, they shipped it UPS Ground.
I fucking hate this. It's always a gamble when I buy shit from NewEgg and its "Free Three Day Shipping". When the packages come from California, it's always three day shipping, but when the packages come from New Jersey, 85% of the time, they ship it Ground. Now, it is only a 380 mile distance, but why the hell does NewEgg say free three day shipping, and then ship it UPS Ground?
Three Day Shipping is a lot faster than Ground, even if its only a mere 400 miles. Trust me. About a year ago, I made a couple of orders from NewEgg in the same day. One order was a CPU and some RAM, and another order was for a heatsink / fan. The CPU / RAM was shipped Ground, and the fan was shipped Three Day.
I got the fan 2 days later. I got the CPU and RAM, about 4 days later. There is a difference. When I order parts, and they ship from New Jersey and they are shipped Ground, they fucking sit in Parsippany New Jersey for an extra day or two. When I order parts and they are shipped Three Days, the parts are in Parsippany for like eight hours.
I'm wondering if I should even ship the piece of shit Gigabyte board back to NewEgg. Chances are, I'm only going to get $27 after I return the board [After paying $46 (with shipping) and paying to have it shipped back to them, and have them charge me a fucking 15% restocking fee).
I think Newegg has lost me as a customer. I'm going to try someone else next time I need computer parts.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
NewEgg Finally Lets Me Down
I've been shopping at NewEgg since they literally opened (back in 2001). I remember searching for NewEgg reviews, and finding out a lot of people did not trust this 'new company'. I was only 16 at the time, and I was working 20 hours a week making $5.15 an hour. In other words, I didn't have a lot of cash to spend, so I gave NewEgg a chance in 2001 when I ordered an OEM AMD Duron 950mhz processor for around $50, and a Open Box Socket A motherboard for a mere $25. Hell, for $75 I was getting a motherboard and a CPU (it was, and will forever be my favorite computer setup ever).
Over the past seven years, I have ordered a lot of shit from NewEgg. I've ordered more RAM and processors than you can shake a stick at. One of the biggest things I order from NewEgg are Open Box motherboards. I do this because, they usually close to 1/2 price of the new boards, and secondly I really don't need all the crap that comes with a motherboard. In case you didn't know, when you buy a open box board from NewEgg, you're basically getting the motherboard alone (if you're lucky they put it in a box, but lately they have just been shipping me the board wrapped in bubblewrap).
I haven't used a floppy drive in the past five years, so I don't need the FDD cable (truth be told, I have about twenty brand new ones from boards I have purchased just laying in a box in my basement). IDE cables are great, but I have a shitload of those too. Some motherboards come with SATA cables, and some even come with molex to SATA power adapters (which are the greatest thing in the universe, but they are all lacking).
And those manuals that come with motherboards? Forget about them. I swear, motherboard manufacturers don't even bother to update the manuals. They all consist of the same things;
1. How To Install CPU
2. How To Install RAM
3. Shitty Explanation Of Board Features
4. Shitty Explanation OF BIOS Features
Totally useless, unless you are clueless.
Anyhow, back to my original point. I have purchased many items from NewEgg over the past seven years. I've purchased new products (I ONLY EVER BUY NEW CPUS. I WILL NEVER EVER BUY A USED / OPEN BOX / REFURBISHED CPU), new OEM, refurbished, and open box products. I've only had mild problems with products I purchased in the past (PC SHIT.. or CHIPS motherboards failing after a couple of months), but now I can say I've finally had a problem with a NEwEgg product, and had to file for an RMA.
I bought a Open Box AM2 motherboard to go along with my new Athlon LE-1620 processor. I have pretty much always been either a Biostar or PC Chips guy when it comes to motherboards, but this time I decided to give Gigabyte a chance. So I ordered an open box GIGABYTE GA-M61SME-S2 motherboard. It retails new for $49, but I got it open box for $35 (keep in mind, this board is just for a hobby box, meaning I'm going to benchmark the CPU, screw around with Linux, and then sell it in a few weeks like I usually do).
I was really excited for the board and CPU to come, but when the board arrived I knew I was finally going to have a problem with a NewEgg order. Instead of coming in a box, they wrapped the board in bubblewrap! Usually when I order a board from NewEgg, they at least put it in a motherboard box. But not with this board.
I anxiously through the system together. And I booted it up, and was quickly let down.
It booted ok.
The VGA output was all messed up. After a careful analysis, the north bridge Geforce 6100 chip was having some serious issues. I had to keep constant pressure on the corner of the heatsink in order for the integrated display to function correctly. Not only that, but because I believe the South bridge was also in the same area, as the computer acted retarded (Couldn't recognize a SATA drive, gave hundreds of errors booting a Linux livecd, etc).
Sadly, I had to file a RMA request from NewEgg. I was really pissed off when I found out that NewEgg was going to charge be a $5 restocking fee (how can you restock a defective motherboard) and I had to pay $9 to ship the son of a bitch board back to them. That means, I spent a total of $41 for the board ($35 + $6 shipping) and will get a total of $27 back. I was really just planning on junking the board, but I have that beautiful AMD Athlon LE-1620 with a freakin' meg of L2 cache to use.
Pretty hard to buy a AM2 board for $27. I guess I can honestly say that after all of these years of being a Newegg customer, I am kind of pissed that I am losing 35% of my initial investment and a couple hours of my time because I received a defectvie board.
Over the past seven years, I have ordered a lot of shit from NewEgg. I've ordered more RAM and processors than you can shake a stick at. One of the biggest things I order from NewEgg are Open Box motherboards. I do this because, they usually close to 1/2 price of the new boards, and secondly I really don't need all the crap that comes with a motherboard. In case you didn't know, when you buy a open box board from NewEgg, you're basically getting the motherboard alone (if you're lucky they put it in a box, but lately they have just been shipping me the board wrapped in bubblewrap).
I haven't used a floppy drive in the past five years, so I don't need the FDD cable (truth be told, I have about twenty brand new ones from boards I have purchased just laying in a box in my basement). IDE cables are great, but I have a shitload of those too. Some motherboards come with SATA cables, and some even come with molex to SATA power adapters (which are the greatest thing in the universe, but they are all lacking).
And those manuals that come with motherboards? Forget about them. I swear, motherboard manufacturers don't even bother to update the manuals. They all consist of the same things;
1. How To Install CPU
2. How To Install RAM
3. Shitty Explanation Of Board Features
4. Shitty Explanation OF BIOS Features
Totally useless, unless you are clueless.
Anyhow, back to my original point. I have purchased many items from NewEgg over the past seven years. I've purchased new products (I ONLY EVER BUY NEW CPUS. I WILL NEVER EVER BUY A USED / OPEN BOX / REFURBISHED CPU), new OEM, refurbished, and open box products. I've only had mild problems with products I purchased in the past (PC SHIT.. or CHIPS motherboards failing after a couple of months), but now I can say I've finally had a problem with a NEwEgg product, and had to file for an RMA.
I bought a Open Box AM2 motherboard to go along with my new Athlon LE-1620 processor. I have pretty much always been either a Biostar or PC Chips guy when it comes to motherboards, but this time I decided to give Gigabyte a chance. So I ordered an open box GIGABYTE GA-M61SME-S2 motherboard. It retails new for $49, but I got it open box for $35 (keep in mind, this board is just for a hobby box, meaning I'm going to benchmark the CPU, screw around with Linux, and then sell it in a few weeks like I usually do).
I was really excited for the board and CPU to come, but when the board arrived I knew I was finally going to have a problem with a NewEgg order. Instead of coming in a box, they wrapped the board in bubblewrap! Usually when I order a board from NewEgg, they at least put it in a motherboard box. But not with this board.
I anxiously through the system together. And I booted it up, and was quickly let down.
It booted ok.
The VGA output was all messed up. After a careful analysis, the north bridge Geforce 6100 chip was having some serious issues. I had to keep constant pressure on the corner of the heatsink in order for the integrated display to function correctly. Not only that, but because I believe the South bridge was also in the same area, as the computer acted retarded (Couldn't recognize a SATA drive, gave hundreds of errors booting a Linux livecd, etc).
Sadly, I had to file a RMA request from NewEgg. I was really pissed off when I found out that NewEgg was going to charge be a $5 restocking fee (how can you restock a defective motherboard) and I had to pay $9 to ship the son of a bitch board back to them. That means, I spent a total of $41 for the board ($35 + $6 shipping) and will get a total of $27 back. I was really just planning on junking the board, but I have that beautiful AMD Athlon LE-1620 with a freakin' meg of L2 cache to use.
Pretty hard to buy a AM2 board for $27. I guess I can honestly say that after all of these years of being a Newegg customer, I am kind of pissed that I am losing 35% of my initial investment and a couple hours of my time because I received a defectvie board.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Why I Didn't Buy A Macbook
In early January I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1525 from Staples (mostly because I had some killer coupons, and got a pretty impressive laptop for next to peanuts). But before I purchased the Inspiron, I had been planning for several months (okay maybe since Apple announced the updated MacBooks at the end of October) on purchasing a new Macbook.
Why did I want a Macbook? I can answer that question by asking "Why not?". I was wrapped up in OS X and the iLife suite, that I started to get my mind set on purchasing a MacBook. My fiancee continually reminded me that during our relationship, I had purchased several Apple computers (Okay, let's get the list out; an iBook G4, eMac, PowerMac G5, Mac Mini G4, Mac Mini Core Solo) only to bitch and moan about their performance and sell them on eBay.
She also reminded me of the enormous price. $1100 for a very basic laptop. During November and December I tried to explain to her the additional cost of the system, but eventually I fell up short. I started to loose interest in OS X by January, and I quickly gave thanks to my fiancee for helping to prevent me from purchasing a MacBook, that would have found itself on eBay within a few weeks.
Why didn't I buy a Macbook?
Okay, the price of a Macbook is out of this world. I don't care if it comes with OS X and I can run iLife on it (Pretty much any modern x86 machine can run OS X if you set your heart to [meaning you spend a couple hours tinkering with it]) The $1100 base price is a joke. Apple wants to charge $1100 for a system that comes with one gigabyte of memory, and an 80 gb HD. Oh yeah, the base model can't even burn DVDs. 2005 called, and they want their budget laptop specifications back.
For me, the $1100 base model would have quickly jumped to over $1300. I would have purchased 4 gb of RAM ($100), and a 160gb HD ($150) from NewEgg and installed it myself. Not only that, but I would have two sticks of 512mb RAM and a useless 80gb HD that I would end up trying to sell on eBay. Oh yeah, and I still wouldn't be able to burn a #$@@#R'in DVD! What the hell Apple? At least give people the ability to burn DVDs with a $1100 laptop.
Looking at the competition, the Sunday newspaper has a vast variety of laptop specials for under $500, and these $500 laptops all have at least a gig of memory, a spacious (120+ gb HD) and a DVD burner. Sure, they don't have the shitty 13.3 inch widescreen (they have a bigger 15.4 or a 14.1 widescreen) or the cool white Macbook scheme, but at least they have two trackpad buttons. (Another 'What the hell Apple?', who really wants laptop with only one mouse button?)
I tried to think of things I could defend the Macbook with (besides running OS X) but I ultimately came up short. It is true that the Core 2 Duo processors that the Macbooks use have a 4mb L2 cache, but who really cares? What's that L2 cache going to do for somebody that purchases the $1100 Macbook and wants to burn a DVD? "Wow, my Macbook really compressed that DVD video quickly! Too bad I don't have a $#$@# DVD burner to burn the DVD with"
I also thought of that new Magsafe AC adapter, but after researching it, I found out that tons of people have reported problems with the adapter. I guess while in theory its a really good idea, but in practice its a flaw filled design.
Then finally, for a brief second I thought about 'build quality' and laughed for about fifteen minutes before I continued to write this post. Tons of people say that Apple builds damn good products. Unfortunately, after owning several new Apple products, I can say by my account, Apple has the worst product build quality.
For example, I bought a G4 iBook in 2004. During my brief one year ownership, I had it serviced four times for the same LCD / logic board problem (the LCD backlight would fail to turn on). I kept the laptop on a desk the whole time, so under no circumstance was it my fault. After having it serviced the fourth time, Apple gave me a new iBook, which I quickly sold on eBay. I purchased a Compaq laptop, and after three years never had one issue with it.
I also had severe problems with a Intel Core Solo Mac Mini I purchased. Something was wrong with the Combo Drive; one startup the system would recognize the drive, the next startup the system wouldn't recongize the drive at all. The SATA hard drive controller also displayed problems when I was copying / transferring data. Unfortunately, when I contacted Apple for this problem, the service technicians actually tried to convince me that these problems were 'features' and would not do anything to help my Intel Mac Mini. So it went off to eBay, problems and all.
So why did I want to stick with Apple? It's not because of their hardware (it sucks), its because I really enjoy the software. Then again, it could just be that I'm stupid and wanted to give Apple yet another chance. Yeah, that's probably it.
But would I ever buy a Mac product again?
Most likely not. I go through enough computer hardware as it is. Sure OS X is cool for ten minutes, but that ten minutes of coolness is expensive. For the price of the base Macbook ($1100) I purchased a 1.6ghz Pentium Dual Core, 4gb RAM, 200gb HD, DVD burning, 15.4 widescreen Dell Inspiron that gets 4-5 hours of battery life for about 1/2 the price of the Mac Book.
"But it's not a Mac!"
Who cares?
Besides, OS X Leopard can run perfect (with all devices working) on this Inspiron 1525, in case I ever decide to screw around with OS X again.
Why did I want a Macbook? I can answer that question by asking "Why not?". I was wrapped up in OS X and the iLife suite, that I started to get my mind set on purchasing a MacBook. My fiancee continually reminded me that during our relationship, I had purchased several Apple computers (Okay, let's get the list out; an iBook G4, eMac, PowerMac G5, Mac Mini G4, Mac Mini Core Solo) only to bitch and moan about their performance and sell them on eBay.
She also reminded me of the enormous price. $1100 for a very basic laptop. During November and December I tried to explain to her the additional cost of the system, but eventually I fell up short. I started to loose interest in OS X by January, and I quickly gave thanks to my fiancee for helping to prevent me from purchasing a MacBook, that would have found itself on eBay within a few weeks.
Why didn't I buy a Macbook?
Okay, the price of a Macbook is out of this world. I don't care if it comes with OS X and I can run iLife on it (Pretty much any modern x86 machine can run OS X if you set your heart to [meaning you spend a couple hours tinkering with it]) The $1100 base price is a joke. Apple wants to charge $1100 for a system that comes with one gigabyte of memory, and an 80 gb HD. Oh yeah, the base model can't even burn DVDs. 2005 called, and they want their budget laptop specifications back.
For me, the $1100 base model would have quickly jumped to over $1300. I would have purchased 4 gb of RAM ($100), and a 160gb HD ($150) from NewEgg and installed it myself. Not only that, but I would have two sticks of 512mb RAM and a useless 80gb HD that I would end up trying to sell on eBay. Oh yeah, and I still wouldn't be able to burn a #$@@#R'in DVD! What the hell Apple? At least give people the ability to burn DVDs with a $1100 laptop.
Looking at the competition, the Sunday newspaper has a vast variety of laptop specials for under $500, and these $500 laptops all have at least a gig of memory, a spacious (120+ gb HD) and a DVD burner. Sure, they don't have the shitty 13.3 inch widescreen (they have a bigger 15.4 or a 14.1 widescreen) or the cool white Macbook scheme, but at least they have two trackpad buttons. (Another 'What the hell Apple?', who really wants laptop with only one mouse button?)
I tried to think of things I could defend the Macbook with (besides running OS X) but I ultimately came up short. It is true that the Core 2 Duo processors that the Macbooks use have a 4mb L2 cache, but who really cares? What's that L2 cache going to do for somebody that purchases the $1100 Macbook and wants to burn a DVD? "Wow, my Macbook really compressed that DVD video quickly! Too bad I don't have a $#$@# DVD burner to burn the DVD with"
I also thought of that new Magsafe AC adapter, but after researching it, I found out that tons of people have reported problems with the adapter. I guess while in theory its a really good idea, but in practice its a flaw filled design.
Then finally, for a brief second I thought about 'build quality' and laughed for about fifteen minutes before I continued to write this post. Tons of people say that Apple builds damn good products. Unfortunately, after owning several new Apple products, I can say by my account, Apple has the worst product build quality.
For example, I bought a G4 iBook in 2004. During my brief one year ownership, I had it serviced four times for the same LCD / logic board problem (the LCD backlight would fail to turn on). I kept the laptop on a desk the whole time, so under no circumstance was it my fault. After having it serviced the fourth time, Apple gave me a new iBook, which I quickly sold on eBay. I purchased a Compaq laptop, and after three years never had one issue with it.
I also had severe problems with a Intel Core Solo Mac Mini I purchased. Something was wrong with the Combo Drive; one startup the system would recognize the drive, the next startup the system wouldn't recongize the drive at all. The SATA hard drive controller also displayed problems when I was copying / transferring data. Unfortunately, when I contacted Apple for this problem, the service technicians actually tried to convince me that these problems were 'features' and would not do anything to help my Intel Mac Mini. So it went off to eBay, problems and all.
So why did I want to stick with Apple? It's not because of their hardware (it sucks), its because I really enjoy the software. Then again, it could just be that I'm stupid and wanted to give Apple yet another chance. Yeah, that's probably it.
But would I ever buy a Mac product again?
Most likely not. I go through enough computer hardware as it is. Sure OS X is cool for ten minutes, but that ten minutes of coolness is expensive. For the price of the base Macbook ($1100) I purchased a 1.6ghz Pentium Dual Core, 4gb RAM, 200gb HD, DVD burning, 15.4 widescreen Dell Inspiron that gets 4-5 hours of battery life for about 1/2 the price of the Mac Book.
"But it's not a Mac!"
Who cares?
Besides, OS X Leopard can run perfect (with all devices working) on this Inspiron 1525, in case I ever decide to screw around with OS X again.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Celeron 430 Revisited.
Wow. It's been four or so months since I last updated this blog! I haven't had a lot of cash to waste on computer products (I quit working full time to go back to school full time.. bummer) but I still managed to save enough moolah up to purchase a laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1525 for school) and am getting ready to go back to AMD for my desktop solution.
I just sold the Celeron 430 processor I bought several months ago for $20 to some guy on eBay for $35. I also plan to sell a Geforce 7300gs graphics card, and the Biostar socket 775 intel motherboard, and use the money to build a cheap AMD machine.
Why?
Well besides having an Intel Pentium Dual Core cpu in my laptop, I'm done with Mac OS X and the 430. The only reason I purchased the 430 was to be able to run OS X, but alas I grew tired of OS X and have moved on to bigger and better things (Okay, so now I am into Linux.. don't blame me, blame college professors that think you should have a firm grasp of Linux if you're trying to get your Master's degree in computer science).
But now, it's time for another look at the Celeron 430 processor. I made a big stink about it a couple months ago (because, well, I only paid $20 for it), but now that stink is really not a big deal, especially when the damn thing is still going for $50+ on the retail market.
Now it's time for another review of the processor.. and I hate to say it, but I don't really like the Conroe based processor any more. Why? Well, because of a few things.
The price, $50 is just not worth it. I guess I was rather lucky to obtain one for $20 several months ago, but if you are actually planning on purchasing one of these bad boys for $50, then you really have to think about this. Pentium Dual Core chips can be had for $20 more (which okay, is a 40% markup), but AMD actually has a wide range of CPUs for the same amount of money. You can get yourself a dual core Athlon for the same price as the Celeron 430 on NewEgg (Even if you overclock the Celeron, two cores are better than one for $50).
Okay, I admit I bashed AMD after I got the Celeron chip, but remember I overclocked the chip 33%. I didn't do a followup post, but the cheap motherboard wasn't fully able to handle the overclocked processor after several hours of operation. That's why I ended up having to set the Celeron 430 back to 1.8ghz, in which it had its ass handed to it several times by the Athlon X2. If you are going to use a cheap motherboard with the Celeron chip (which you most likely are, if you are only buying a Celeron), then chances are you too will run into crashes.
Today, AMD has a slew of processors under the Celeron 430's price. As I mentioned before, it's even possible to get a dual core Athlon for the same price. AMD also has a variety of new LE (I'm guessing it stands for Low Energy or something similar) processors including $30 Semprons and $45 Athlons that come with fans / heatsinks. The freaking LE-1160 (which is $45 at the time of this writing from NewEgg) runs at 45w, 2.4ghz and has a megabyte of L2 cache.
We'll see how my next experiment goes (with the LE-1160, naturlich!)...
I just sold the Celeron 430 processor I bought several months ago for $20 to some guy on eBay for $35. I also plan to sell a Geforce 7300gs graphics card, and the Biostar socket 775 intel motherboard, and use the money to build a cheap AMD machine.
Why?
Well besides having an Intel Pentium Dual Core cpu in my laptop, I'm done with Mac OS X and the 430. The only reason I purchased the 430 was to be able to run OS X, but alas I grew tired of OS X and have moved on to bigger and better things (Okay, so now I am into Linux.. don't blame me, blame college professors that think you should have a firm grasp of Linux if you're trying to get your Master's degree in computer science).
But now, it's time for another look at the Celeron 430 processor. I made a big stink about it a couple months ago (because, well, I only paid $20 for it), but now that stink is really not a big deal, especially when the damn thing is still going for $50+ on the retail market.
Now it's time for another review of the processor.. and I hate to say it, but I don't really like the Conroe based processor any more. Why? Well, because of a few things.
The price, $50 is just not worth it. I guess I was rather lucky to obtain one for $20 several months ago, but if you are actually planning on purchasing one of these bad boys for $50, then you really have to think about this. Pentium Dual Core chips can be had for $20 more (which okay, is a 40% markup), but AMD actually has a wide range of CPUs for the same amount of money. You can get yourself a dual core Athlon for the same price as the Celeron 430 on NewEgg (Even if you overclock the Celeron, two cores are better than one for $50).
Okay, I admit I bashed AMD after I got the Celeron chip, but remember I overclocked the chip 33%. I didn't do a followup post, but the cheap motherboard wasn't fully able to handle the overclocked processor after several hours of operation. That's why I ended up having to set the Celeron 430 back to 1.8ghz, in which it had its ass handed to it several times by the Athlon X2. If you are going to use a cheap motherboard with the Celeron chip (which you most likely are, if you are only buying a Celeron), then chances are you too will run into crashes.
Today, AMD has a slew of processors under the Celeron 430's price. As I mentioned before, it's even possible to get a dual core Athlon for the same price. AMD also has a variety of new LE (I'm guessing it stands for Low Energy or something similar) processors including $30 Semprons and $45 Athlons that come with fans / heatsinks. The freaking LE-1160 (which is $45 at the time of this writing from NewEgg) runs at 45w, 2.4ghz and has a megabyte of L2 cache.
We'll see how my next experiment goes (with the LE-1160, naturlich!)...
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Celeron 430... Wow.
Intel doesn't talk much about its Celeron processors nowadays. They are too busy pushing their Pentium Dual Core chips in budget laptops and cheap desktops. Hell, to be honest, I didn't even know Intel still made Celeron processors.
They do. And I'll be perfectly honest; They kick total ass.
I'm not just saying this either. Before I tried a Celeron 430 last week, I hated Intel. I was such an unhappy camper after using the Pentium D 805, I swore to myself I was never going to touch an Intel processor again.
And I probably wouldn't have, if I couldn't have bought one of these Conroe based Celerons for $22 on ebay (Although in all honesty, I was going to buy a Celeron 420 from NewEgg for $43).
I can hardly find any information about these processors on the internet, and that's really a damn shame considering these things have been out since June. Everybody is all about multicore chips nowadays, but the Celeron 4XX is a true single core chip.
The Celeron 4XX series isn't just a Conroe based Core 2 Duo with one of its cores disabled, its actually a true one core processor. The chips run on a 800 mhz FSB and have 512K of L2 cache. Some people on NewEgg bitch about the lack of L2 cache in their reviews, but I don't have a problem with it; my Athlon X2 4400+ only has 512K of L2 cache per core.
When I bought the Celeron 430, I was not expecting much. I bought a motherboard for $30 and figured I would only use the system to run Mac OS X over a weekend or two before I packed the CPU and board up and sold them on eBay. I figured that the performance would totally suck, and at first I actually was going to cancel the motherboard order and just try and resell the processor on eBay.
The CPU and motherboard sat unopened for about a week before I was interested in trying the processor out. I put the board in an old case with a 300 watt Antec power supply, a 1gb stick of RAM from my Athlon system, and an old 40gb IDE hard drive that contained Mac OS X 10.4.8.
After putting the system up I booted it up, and went into the BIOS. Despite being a $30 motherboard, I could actually overclock the system by setting the bus speed. The default was 200 times a multiplier of 9 which yielded 1800 mhz. For shits and giggles I set the bus speed to 260 and restarted the system. I figured the system wouldn't boot, and I would have to reset the BIOS jumper.
I couldn't believe the system booted. With no problems whatsoever, either. Boom, right out of the box my 1.8ghz Celeron was operating at 2378mhz, or as I round up, 2.4 ghz. A freaking 33% speed increase!
I was amazed by this number, especially since after several tests the system barely ran any hotter. In fact the system when 33% overclocked was still running cooler than my Athlon X2 4400 system.
Runnong OS X on the machine was totally responsive. Never before had I used an OS X machine that ran so smoothly. I bought an Intel Mac Mini Core Solo last year, and sold it within a month because the performance was horrendous. The Celeron 430 however was amazing.
It wasn't long before I installed Windows XP on the machine and did some tests. After I saw the test results, I quickly moved the Celeron and motherboard into my regular computer case and put the Athlon X2 4400+ and its board into my closet.
SuperPi
This was the test that I couldn't believe! My Pentium D 805 took a minute to calculate Pi to a million places. I was amazed when my Athlon X2 4400 did it in 39 seconds. I was completely speechless when this budget processor completed the task in 29 seconds; a full ten second lead from a processor that I paid four times as much.
Geekbench
I've come to accept the fact that Geekbench gives totally different scores on the same hardware depending on what OS is used. When Geekbench is run on the Celeron 430 @ 2.4 ghz in Windows XP, it gets a score of 2040. Not bad considering my dual core Athlon X2 4400+ manages to get a score of 2428 at stock speed (2.3ghz).
So what did I learn? I learned that Intel is still making single core processors, and that Core based CPUs really kick ass. AMD can kick the shit out of Intel's Netburst based processors, but I think they are going to have a hard time fighting off Core based processors.
I just wished I would have given Intel another chance before I bought my AMD Athlon X2 system. Damn, I could only imagine the results of an overclocked Core 2 Duo.
They do. And I'll be perfectly honest; They kick total ass.
I'm not just saying this either. Before I tried a Celeron 430 last week, I hated Intel. I was such an unhappy camper after using the Pentium D 805, I swore to myself I was never going to touch an Intel processor again.
And I probably wouldn't have, if I couldn't have bought one of these Conroe based Celerons for $22 on ebay (Although in all honesty, I was going to buy a Celeron 420 from NewEgg for $43).
I can hardly find any information about these processors on the internet, and that's really a damn shame considering these things have been out since June. Everybody is all about multicore chips nowadays, but the Celeron 4XX is a true single core chip.
The Celeron 4XX series isn't just a Conroe based Core 2 Duo with one of its cores disabled, its actually a true one core processor. The chips run on a 800 mhz FSB and have 512K of L2 cache. Some people on NewEgg bitch about the lack of L2 cache in their reviews, but I don't have a problem with it; my Athlon X2 4400+ only has 512K of L2 cache per core.
When I bought the Celeron 430, I was not expecting much. I bought a motherboard for $30 and figured I would only use the system to run Mac OS X over a weekend or two before I packed the CPU and board up and sold them on eBay. I figured that the performance would totally suck, and at first I actually was going to cancel the motherboard order and just try and resell the processor on eBay.
The CPU and motherboard sat unopened for about a week before I was interested in trying the processor out. I put the board in an old case with a 300 watt Antec power supply, a 1gb stick of RAM from my Athlon system, and an old 40gb IDE hard drive that contained Mac OS X 10.4.8.
After putting the system up I booted it up, and went into the BIOS. Despite being a $30 motherboard, I could actually overclock the system by setting the bus speed. The default was 200 times a multiplier of 9 which yielded 1800 mhz. For shits and giggles I set the bus speed to 260 and restarted the system. I figured the system wouldn't boot, and I would have to reset the BIOS jumper.
I couldn't believe the system booted. With no problems whatsoever, either. Boom, right out of the box my 1.8ghz Celeron was operating at 2378mhz, or as I round up, 2.4 ghz. A freaking 33% speed increase!
I was amazed by this number, especially since after several tests the system barely ran any hotter. In fact the system when 33% overclocked was still running cooler than my Athlon X2 4400 system.
Runnong OS X on the machine was totally responsive. Never before had I used an OS X machine that ran so smoothly. I bought an Intel Mac Mini Core Solo last year, and sold it within a month because the performance was horrendous. The Celeron 430 however was amazing.
It wasn't long before I installed Windows XP on the machine and did some tests. After I saw the test results, I quickly moved the Celeron and motherboard into my regular computer case and put the Athlon X2 4400+ and its board into my closet.
SuperPi
This was the test that I couldn't believe! My Pentium D 805 took a minute to calculate Pi to a million places. I was amazed when my Athlon X2 4400 did it in 39 seconds. I was completely speechless when this budget processor completed the task in 29 seconds; a full ten second lead from a processor that I paid four times as much.
Geekbench
I've come to accept the fact that Geekbench gives totally different scores on the same hardware depending on what OS is used. When Geekbench is run on the Celeron 430 @ 2.4 ghz in Windows XP, it gets a score of 2040. Not bad considering my dual core Athlon X2 4400+ manages to get a score of 2428 at stock speed (2.3ghz).
So what did I learn? I learned that Intel is still making single core processors, and that Core based CPUs really kick ass. AMD can kick the shit out of Intel's Netburst based processors, but I think they are going to have a hard time fighting off Core based processors.
I just wished I would have given Intel another chance before I bought my AMD Athlon X2 system. Damn, I could only imagine the results of an overclocked Core 2 Duo.
I'm sorry Intel.
So a while back, I bitched about Intel and how I was never going to buy another one of their processors because of the horrible experience I had with the Pentium D 805. I was really happy with my Athlon X2 4400+ system, but the problem was I just couldn't find it in myself to love Windows Vista.
Lets face it; Windows Vista is the biggest load of operating shit the world has ever seen. I thought my system with 2gb of 800 mhz DDR2 RAM would be able to run Vista, but for some damn reason Vista seemed to always want to access my hard drive (YES I TURNED SEARCH INDEXING OFF!) for some unknown reason.
I was back to using good old Windows XP but I quickly realized that I wanted to try something different. Linux was out of the question, because well frankly, everytime I install any kind of distro what so ever, it always fails to boot within a month (I do something to screw up the settings, and the window manager doesn't load, so I'm stuck with a command prompt and I'm too damn lazy to learn Linux).
Then I got this brilliant idea of using OS X on my machine. I actually owned some recent Macs in the recent years, and actually enjoy using the OS X software. My problem is I have always had a problem with the hardware. If it wasn't for the shitty hardware experience, I would most likely be using a nice iMac C2D today, but instead now I am just using OS X on generic hardware. I could write ten pages of whether its legal or not (its not legal), but I'll do that some other time.
So back to the whole OS X story. To make a long story short, OS X wouldn't play friendly on my AMD system. My onboard nVidia graphics didn't work, my sound didn't work, and a bunch of other things probably didn't work (my wireless network card did however work with a bit of tweaking).
I did some research, and it seemed that the solution was to buy a Intel processor and an Intel chipset motherboard. Mac OS X ran very nice on my Pentium D system, so I figured I would purchase a cheap Conroe based Celeron processor, and a cheap motherboard despite my new found hatred towards Intel.
I didn't realize how awesome the Core 2 platform really is. I managed to buy a Celeron 430 CPU off of eBay for a mere $20 and a Intel 945gz based Biostar motherboard off of NewEgg for $30. I took the 2gb of 800mhz DDR2 memory from my AMD system and threw it into the board (It only operated at 533mhz though.. bummer) and overclocked the processor upto 2.4ghz with no problems (I had to literally fight with my Athlon X2 4400+ to overclock it sucessfully, and I was using a somewhat expensive motherboard!)
So why am I using the Celeron 430 now instead of the Athlon X2 4400 as my main system? Its not all about me running OS X... the Celeron 430 when OC'ed is actually a pretty damn good processor that almost fully puts my dual core Athlon to shame!
More details later!
Lets face it; Windows Vista is the biggest load of operating shit the world has ever seen. I thought my system with 2gb of 800 mhz DDR2 RAM would be able to run Vista, but for some damn reason Vista seemed to always want to access my hard drive (YES I TURNED SEARCH INDEXING OFF!) for some unknown reason.
I was back to using good old Windows XP but I quickly realized that I wanted to try something different. Linux was out of the question, because well frankly, everytime I install any kind of distro what so ever, it always fails to boot within a month (I do something to screw up the settings, and the window manager doesn't load, so I'm stuck with a command prompt and I'm too damn lazy to learn Linux).
Then I got this brilliant idea of using OS X on my machine. I actually owned some recent Macs in the recent years, and actually enjoy using the OS X software. My problem is I have always had a problem with the hardware. If it wasn't for the shitty hardware experience, I would most likely be using a nice iMac C2D today, but instead now I am just using OS X on generic hardware. I could write ten pages of whether its legal or not (its not legal), but I'll do that some other time.
So back to the whole OS X story. To make a long story short, OS X wouldn't play friendly on my AMD system. My onboard nVidia graphics didn't work, my sound didn't work, and a bunch of other things probably didn't work (my wireless network card did however work with a bit of tweaking).
I did some research, and it seemed that the solution was to buy a Intel processor and an Intel chipset motherboard. Mac OS X ran very nice on my Pentium D system, so I figured I would purchase a cheap Conroe based Celeron processor, and a cheap motherboard despite my new found hatred towards Intel.
I didn't realize how awesome the Core 2 platform really is. I managed to buy a Celeron 430 CPU off of eBay for a mere $20 and a Intel 945gz based Biostar motherboard off of NewEgg for $30. I took the 2gb of 800mhz DDR2 memory from my AMD system and threw it into the board (It only operated at 533mhz though.. bummer) and overclocked the processor upto 2.4ghz with no problems (I had to literally fight with my Athlon X2 4400+ to overclock it sucessfully, and I was using a somewhat expensive motherboard!)
So why am I using the Celeron 430 now instead of the Athlon X2 4400 as my main system? Its not all about me running OS X... the Celeron 430 when OC'ed is actually a pretty damn good processor that almost fully puts my dual core Athlon to shame!
More details later!
I want to update.
Geez I really want to keep up with this blog! I have a couple posts I typed up and just need to post, and I also have a shitload of new stuff to write about (including about how Intel's Celeron 430 processor kicks the shit out of my Athlon X2 4400+ in SuperPi)
Scary thought; I was logging into my Blogger account and took a minute to look at the blogs that were updated within the past minute. Amongst the updated, "Enema Erotica". I thought I was strange for writing about computer hardware..
Scary thought; I was logging into my Blogger account and took a minute to look at the blogs that were updated within the past minute. Amongst the updated, "Enema Erotica". I thought I was strange for writing about computer hardware..
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